10 Weird Facts You Didn't Know About Elephants

2023-09-23 16:08:00, Kuriozitete CNA

Elephants, large mammals that live mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, are endangered by poaching.

Also, not finding a suitable habitat has always led to a decrease in their number.

But when several families of elephants are headed for extinction, there are some strange facts you may not have known about them.

Today we are bringing 10 facts:

1. Elephants can swim up to 30 miles

The gigantic size does not stop this mammal from swimming, on the contrary, they are good swimmers and can completely submerge under water. Elephants can be recorded traveling up to 30 miles.

2. Elephants rarely get cancer thanks to a gene that kills it

It is very rare for an elephant's body to develop a tumor thanks to the TP53 gene, which is activated when an organism develops an abnormal growth of cells that can cause a tumor.

This gene starts working on the abnormal cells and repairs the damage or kills the cell before it starts to turn into a tumor. Humans have two copies of the TP53 gene, while elephants have 40.

3. Elephants sometimes bury dead or sleeping people

Although we have seen angry elephants attacking humans, these mammals have a gentle side to them. If an elephant happens to see a dead person, they bury him, but it is scary that they can also bury sleeping people.

4. Young elephants need a father figure

Juvenile male elephants go through a period in their lives when they have the potential to become hyper-hormonal.

If young elephants are together in a herd without an older, dominant male, they will enter a period called musth, where testosterone production increases significantly and the elephants become very aggressive.

A father figure prevents young male elephants from behaving aggressively and attacking.

10 Weird Facts You Didn't Know About Elephants

5. Elephants can hear clouds

Elephants have incredible hearing. They have hearing so sharp that even the clouds can hear. When a storm is approaching, the clouds produce infrasound.

These mammals can hear these ultrasounds and know if a storm is approaching. Research has proven that elephants can recognize a rainstorm up to 150 miles away.

6. Elephants can understand different human languages

Elephants have shown an ability to distinguish between human languages ??and also whether a speaker is adult, child, male or female.

This was tested in both Maasai and Kamba languages. The Maasai speaking people sometimes kill elephants and the Kamba generally do not. By a margin of two to one, the elephants reacted defensively against the Maasai version.

10 Weird Facts You Didn't Know About Elephants

7. A group of Kenyan elephants actively extract salt in a cave

In western Kenya, near a long-extinct volcano called Mount Elgon, live a herd of elephants.

They go inside the Kitum cave up to 150 meters deep and have been seen to remove the salt from the walls.

Elephants crave salt and it's hard to get it into their diet, so sodium-rich rocks are attractive.

8. Elephants can hear each other for miles with their feet

Elephants don't just hear sub-sounds, they also use them to communicate.

10 Weird Facts You Didn't Know About Elephants

The sound elephants make has been compared to an explosion. It spreads across the ground like a shock wave, and the extremely sensitive feet of other elephants can sense it dozens of miles away.

By combining the vibrations in their feet with the sounds your ears hear, elephants can pinpoint the source.

9. Elephants know how to induce labor

Like pregnant Kenyan women who induce labor by consuming a plant, elephants have been seen doing the same.

10. An elephant trampled a woman, then came to her funeral and did it again

In 2022, an elephant killed a woman in India as she went to the river to get water.

The exact reason for this action is not known, but what was observed was that the elephant reappeared at the woman's funeral, picked up her corpse, threw it, trampled it and then ran away.

Most people have assumed it was the same elephant, but this cannot be confirmed./ CNA